Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Strange things are afoot

Well, only one strange thing in particular. I have had a yahoo! account for a really long time (long in email world, anyway) - it's going on 8 years. I got it when I first moved to London, because we could only access our school email (my very first email address ever) through this weird little window thing that got on my nerves. It's definitely no longer my primary email address, but it's sort of comforting that it's still there...and eventually I will post pictures on my flickr account, and then it will actually be used. I check it every other day or so, just to clean out the spam and occasionally read an article from the NY Times emails that I still get there.

Then yesterday, I tried to log in, and was informed that my password was incorrect. Now, I had just gotten an email in another account (linked to that one) that a yahoo password was changed, but I just assumed it was junkmail as I hadn't changed anything. So then I tried to do the whole "I forgot my password" routine with the computer, but it kept telling me that the verification information I entered wasn't correct. Now, I did have to try about 6 different zip codes (I have moved a LOT in 8 years), but even then, had no luck.

Fast forward to this morning, where I received yet another email in the other account, informing me that my password was changed again, and then I got an email FROM MYSELF telling me the new password. It basically said "Hi Ellie. Here's your new password." I tried to log in and...it worked. I promptly changed all of the information back to my own (the zip code was definitely no place I have lived) and did all the security stuff I had been putting off for a while now. But how weird is that? As far as I can tell, they didn't send any messages to anyone. I keep looking at all of the different sites I visit that are associated with the email (amazon, flickr) but nothing seems to be affected. I had still already notified the Yahoo! people to explain the craziness.

So if you notice a spike in weird spam, maybe that's why they hacked my account. Or just really borrowed it for a while.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That's very disturbing. Have you changed all of your passwords everywhere?

Unknown said...

Glad to know you can get back in to the world of Ya-hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rachel said...

I have changed everything, at least everything I could think. I hope it helps! Let this be a lesson to why everyone should use the site keys and such when they are offered to them.